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Monday, June 26, 2017

List: 20 Classic Poems All Men Should Read

The
website The Art of Manlinesstrulyis one of the great website on the
internet and one of my favorites. Its
mission statement claims it is “a blog dedicated to uncovering the lost art of
being a man.” It’s not about indulging
in a hyper masculinity such as those ridiculous “professional” wrestlers or
some other cartoon characterization of masculinity. It’s about understanding and excelling at the
various elements of a man’s life, such as clothing, shaving, family and
fatherhood, sports, and manly skills. If
you’ve never surfed it, you should, and that goes for women too.

John Adams, one of the
founding fathers of the United States, commended poetry to his son John Quincy.
Both Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt committed their favorite poems to
memory. Ancient kings were expected to produce poetry while also being versed
in warfare and statecraft. That poetry has fallen out of favor among men in the
21st century is a recent trend rather than the norm.

To help remedy this, we
have compiled a list of 20 classic poems that every man should read. Spanning
the past two thousand years, the poems on this list represent some of the best
works of poetry ever composed. But don’t worry—they were selected for both
their brevity and ease of application. Some are about striving to overcome,
others about romantic love, and still others about patriotism. Whether you’ve
been reading poetry for years or haven’t read a single line since high school,
these poems are sure to inspire and delight you.

The
list is somewhat questionable if you ask me.
Look it over. Read them all. I’m familiar with most of them. I agree some are poems perfect for men. A couple I don’t understand why they would be
oriented toward manliness, and then some are rather testosterone filled that I
think it does manliness a disservice.
Let me identify the ones I absolutely agree men should be familiar with:

1.
"Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

2.
"If-" by Rudyard Kipling

4.
Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare

6.
"Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

15.
"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne

20.
Ode 1.11 by Horace

So
given I have read a fair amount of poetry in my life and given I consider
myself a man—yes, in today’s world the biological fact of manhood doesn’t
necessarily mean you consider yourself a man—I decided to create my own list of
twenty classic poems for men. These are
poems I’ve been familiar with for most of my life, and somehow are endearing to
me, and I think speak to the fullness of masculinity, true masculinity, not
cartoonish masculinity. Some you may be
familiar with, some you may not.

So
what makes these poems manly? First they
are all written from a man’s perspective, and all the authors are men.

Second,
they take on various aspects of a man’s life: fatherhood (“My Papa’s Waltz”) or
hunting (“The Hunters in the Snow”) or a sailing voyage (Pound’s “Canto I”) or
just a sort of mundane busyness (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”). They look at maturity from a male’s
perspective, such as curbing one’s desire (“The Collar”) or the realization of
time’s passage (“The Wild Swans at Coole”), and they look at a man’s relationship
with God (“The World is too Much with Us” and “The Windhover”). They look at various aspects of love, such as
wooing of a young lady in Henry V or
of a more Platonic friendship with a woman friend (“Water”), or of being
captivated by a mysterious woman (“La Belle Dame Sans Merci”), or seduced
(“Upon Julia’s Clothes) or aroused (“Gloire de Dijon”) or being used by women
(“They Flee from Me”). Finally there are
a fair number of them that deal with death: a tragic death as a soldier (“The
Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”) or the death of a gallant man (“Buffalo
Bill’s” and “At Melville’s Tomb) or resisting death (“Do Not Go Gentle Into
That Good Night”) or death represented as a brawny brute (“The Emperor of Ice
Cream”).

Third,
the language of the poems have a masculine tone, a masculine diction, or a
masculine voice. I don’t have the space
to post every poem in entirety, but I want to give you a sampling from each, a
sample I hope that captures that masculine diction or voice or just perspective.

From
Dylan’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”:

Do not go gentle into
that good night,

Old age should burn and
rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the
dying of the light.

Though wise men at their
end know dark is right,

Because their words had
forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into
that good night. (l. 1-6)

From
Yeats’ “The Wild Swans at Coole”:

But now they drift on the
still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will
they build,

By what lake's edge or
pool

Delight men's eyes when I
awake some day

To find they have flown
away? (l. 25-30)

From
Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice Cream”:

Call the roller of big
cigars,

The muscular one, and bid
him whip

In kitchen cups
concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in
such dress

As they are used to wear,
and let the boys

Bring flowers in last
month’s newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the
emperor of ice-cream. (l. 1-8)

From
Wyatt’s “They Flee from Me”:

They flee from me that
sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking
in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle,
tame, and meek,

That now are wild and do
not remember

That sometime they put
themself in danger

To take bread at my hand;
and now they range,

Busily seeking with a
continual change. (l. 1-7)

From
Crane’s “At Melville's Tomb”:

Compass, quadrant and
sextant contrive

No farther tides ... High
in the azure steeps

Monody shall not wake the
mariner.

This fabulous shadow only
the sea keeps. (l. 13-16)

From
Hopkins’ “The Windhover”:

I caught this morning
morning's minion, king-

dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn
Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady
air, and striding

High there, how he rung
upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off,
off forth on swing,

As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a
bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird, – the
achieve of, the mastery of the thing. (l. 1-8)

From
Shakepeare’s Henry Woos Katherine, Henry
V, Act V, Scene II

[Henry] The princess is
the better Englishwoman. I' faith,

Kate, my wooing is fit
for thy understanding: I am

glad thou canst speak no
better English; for, if

thou couldst, thou
wouldst find me such a plain king

that thou wouldst think I
had sold my farm to buy my

crown. I know no ways to
mince it in love, but

directly to say 'I love
you:' then if you urge me

farther than to say 'do
you in faith?' I wear out

my suit. Give me your
answer; i' faith, do: and so

clap hands and a bargain:
how say you, lady? (l. 121-130)

Herrick’s
“Upon Julia's Clothes” (entire poem):

Whenas in silks my Julia
goes,

Then, then (methinks) how
sweetly flows

That liquefaction of her
clothes.

Next, when I cast mine
eyes, and see

That brave vibration each
way free,

O how that glittering
taketh me!

From
Lawrence’s “Gloire de Dijon”:

When she rises in the
morning

I linger to watch her;

She spreads the
bath-cloth underneath the window

And the sunbeams catch
her

Glistening white on the
shoulders,

While down her sides the
mellow

Golden shadow glows as

She stoops to the sponge,
and her swung breasts

Sway like full-blown
yellow

Gloire de Dijon roses. (l.
1-10)

From
cummings’ “[Buffalo Bill 's]”:

Buffalo Bill ’s

defunct

who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion (l. 1-5)

From
Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us”:

….Great God! I’d rather
be

A Pagan suckled in a
creed outworn;

So might I, standing on
this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would
make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus
rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow
his wreathèd horn. (l. 9-14)

From
Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:

My little horse must
think it queer

To stop without a
farmhouse near

Between the woods and
frozen lake

The darkest evening of
the year. (l. 5-8)

From
Lowell’s “Water”:

Remember? We sat on a
slab of rock.

From this distance in
time

it seems the color

of iris, rotting and
turning purpler,

but it was only

the usual gray rock

turning the usual green

when drenched by the sea.
(l. 13-20)

From
Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”:

I met a lady in the meads

Full beautiful, a faery’s child;

Her hair was long, her
foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing
steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;

For sideways would she
lean, and sing

A faery’s song. (l. 13-20)

From
Roethke’s “My Papa's Waltz”:

The whiskey on your
breath

Could make a small boy
dizzy;

But I hung on like
death:

Such waltzing was not
easy.

We romped until the
pans

Slid from the kitchen
shelf;

My mother’s
countenance

Could not unfrown itself. (l. 1-8)

Jarrell’s
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” (entire poem):

From my mother’s sleep I
fell into the State,

And I hunched in its
belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth,
loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and
the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed
me out of the turret with a hose.

From
Pound’s “Canto I”:

And then went down to the
ship,

Set keel to breakers,
forth on the godly seas, and

We set up mast and sail
on that swart ship,

Bore sheep aboard her,
and our bodies also

Heavy with weeping, and
winds from sternward

Bore us out onward with
bellying canvas,

Circe’s this craft, the
trim-coifed goddess.

Then sat we amidships,
wind jamming the tiller,

Thus with stretched sail,
we went over sea till day’s end. (l. 1- 9)

From
Herbert’s “The Collar”:

Away! take heed;

I will abroad.

Call in thy death's-head
there; tie up thy fears;

He that forbears

To suit and serve his
need

Deserves his load."

But as I rav'd, and grew
more fierce and wild

At every word,

Me thoughts I heard one
calling, "Child";

And I replied, "My
Lord." (l. 27-36)

From
Williams’ “The Hunters in the Snow”:

The over-all picture is
winter

icy mountains

in the background the
return

from the hunt it is
toward evening

from the left

sturdy hunters lead in

their pack the inn-sign

hanging from

a broken hinge is a stag
a crucifix (l. 1-9)

From
Penn Warren’s “Mortal Limit”:

I saw the hawk ride
updraft in the sunset over Wyoming.

It rose from coniferous
darkness, past gray jags

Of mercilessness, past
whiteness, into the gloaming

Of dream-spectral light
above the lazy purity of snow-snags.

There—west—were the
Tetons. Snow-peaks would soon be

In dark profile to break
constellations. Beyond what height

Hangs now the black
speck? Beyond what range will gold eyes
see

New ranges rise to mark a
last scrawl of light? (l. 1-8)

I hope the quotes
from the poems were enticing enough to make you go read them all. None of them are exceedingly long, except
perhaps the Henry V scene. Do you agree these all reflect masculinity in
some way? I know there are other aspects
of masculinity, such as being a husband, which I did not cover. Which poem would you exclude? What other poems would you add?